The Chicago Transit Authority (the CTA) recently finished work on the main component of its Red and Purple Modernization Project (RPM).
The RPM project is an attempt to modernize and add capacity to the North Side Red Line, the CTA’s busiest line by far. The added capacity was furnished chiefly by the creation of an overpass for northbound Brown Line trains just north of the Belmont station. Previously, Brown Line trains had had to cross three active tracks, and delays were frequent. The overpass opened in 2021.
A northbound Brown Line train (at right rear) crosses the new overpass, while southbound Red and Purple Line trains (at left) arrive at Belmont station. Before the overpass opened, trains moving in one direction or the other would have had to wait.
The RPM project also includes several minor improvements. For example, in conjunction with the overpass project, a nearby section of track on the main north-south line was straightened.
The most substantial component of the RPM project is a 1.3-mile (2 km) set of four elevated railway tracks with four stations. It replaced four tracks that had sat on an embankment. It was opened to service on July 20, 2025.
Map showing the new 1.3-mile segment, which runs from just north of the Berwyn station to just south of the Lawrence station. GIS data are mostly from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap and the Chicago Data Portal. The nominal scale of the map is 1:10,000. That’s the scale it would have if printed on an 11-x-5-inch sheet of paper.
The replacement of the 1.3-mile segment occurred mostly because the old stations in this segment were too narrow to be made accessible. There was simply no room on the platforms for escalators, elevators, and wheelchairs. A secondary reason for the project was that the old embankment carried tracks too close to the street level. Trucks occasionally got stuck at the bridges.
Two different lines—the Red Line and the Purple Line—use these four tracks. The Red Line provides 24-hour service between the South Side and Howard Station, near the Chicago-Evanston border. The Purple Line (the Evanston Express) provides rush-hour service between the Loop on the south and Evanston and Wilmette on the north. It makes only one stop—at Wilson Avenue—between Belmont station and Howard station; it does not stop in the 1.3-mile segment. The Red Line runs in the middle two tracks, between which the stations are located. The Purple Line runs on the outer tracks.
The CTA decided to maintain full service during construction. Each pair of tracks—east then west—was torn down in turn and replaced by new, elevated tracks on concrete columns. During the five years that the project took to implement, Red and Purple Line trains had to share the two working tracks. This worked better southbound than northbound, since the north end of the 1.3-mile segment is only approximately 2.7 miles (4.3 km) south of Howard, the Red Line’s northern terminus, and it was possible to dispatch trains in a way that usually kept them separated. Going northbound, however, there were sometimes substantial delays. The 1.3-mile segment is approximately 18 miles (29 km) from the Red Line’s southern terminus at 95th Street, and, in those 18 miles, northbound trains have to pass through Chicago’s CBD (where there are six stations), two major-league baseball stadiums, and numerous other possible sources of delays. It was often impossible to keep to the theoretical schedule. The northbound Evanston Express wasn’t much of an express during the five years of construction. The delays occurred even though only two temporary stations on the 1.3-mile segment were used for the first three years of the project, and only one temporary station was open during the project’s last two years.
Construction was, as always, messy and noisy. The Pandemic slowed work by approximately a year. The CTA did try to notify residents about its construction schedule and has promised a linear park under the new tracks—for 2026 or 2027.
Construction at the Argyle station in 2023. The new structure is at right, the still-active old tracks at left.
The CTA described the RPM as its largest project ever. This is not really accurate, although the project may have been CTA’s most expensive. The Orange Line to Midway Airport (completed in 1993) and the Blue Line extension to O’Hare (completed in 1984) were much larger-scale projects. It’s true, however, that even in inflation-adjusted dollars, they were cheaper than the RPM.1
The trains are definitely quieter than they were on the old embankment, although they were never as noisy on the embankment as they are on the traditional El structure, where they remain very loud.
View south from Argyle station on opening day.
The new stations all have escalators and elevators, and the platforms are much wider than in the old stations. There is plenty of digital signage in all the stations.
Crowds at the Berwyn station on opening day.
There are also artworks.
Art at the new Argyle station.
It would make sense to ask whether the Red Line needs four stations in 1.3 miles of track. The CTA’s management apparently thought of eliminating at least one station (Lawrence, for example, is a quarter mile from the next station in each direction) but feared creating an uproar. All the stations have advocates. The neighborhood is pretty dense by Chicago standards; bus lines cross the CTA tracks at all the stations except Argyle; and there are commercial developments at all the stations.
I’m sure that some people have thought of this project as a kind of model if the CTA ever decided that it wanted to replace its extraordinarily noisy El tracks. There are in fact a few other parts of the system where two tracks could be added to the alley or street where a current line runs, for example, along parts of the Brown Line as it passes through the Near North Side. Given the length of time that the current project took to implement, I’m not sure that many people are still thinking along these lines.
Still, even if the new 1.3 miles of track are short and cost a great deal of money, it’s certainly nice to have a smoother and quieter ride and four new, accessible stations.
- The completed RPM Phase 1 will have cost approximately two billion dollars. The Orange Line is said to have cost around half a billion dollars. The O’Hare Extension cost something like $200,000,000. (These figures come from Wikipedia; I haven’t double-checked them.) Like other transit projects in North America, the RPM, compared to similar projects in most other parts of the world, has been extraordinarily expensive.